The Weekly PCSTATS Newsletter is free to subscribe to, and chocked full of the latest hardware reviews, tech tips and other tasty tid-bits. Sign up and try it out today, or search the PCSTATS Newsletter Archives for past issues.Main Newsletter Archive | Subscribe Today!

Today
is
a 'big' day - we have a
'big' roundup of ten i845E/G motherboards to let you know about, a 'big'
2.8GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor review ready to be read, and a few other
nifty components ripe for your favorite geeks' high-tech Xmas wish
list.

For
starters there's the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro - a fast, impressive, and pretty
expensive videocard that kills
the nVidia GF4Ti4600 hands down. Then there's the Antec SX1030B full-tower case which has loads of room to
spare for extra drives, and even a little modding if you like. This would
normally be where we sign off, but no, there's more.

I asked
Colin to update his Fastest Webmaster Guide and since he had so much to say,
he wrote a whole new article chronicling his rise to the #3 spot.
Since we have "Tablet PC" on
the brain, and since we will shortly be looking at an example from FIC, I
thought you might want to read our review of the original AquaPad here.

Before I sign off, I just wanted
to share one comment I received this week
that says a lot about the state of the Internet, and what we're
trying to accomplish with the PCstats.com Newsletter. This is about the best compliment
we could have gotten, and I'm really glad that we are providing information and tips
which are useful in your daily computing lives! Thanks Graham!

"Sorry to bother you, but I feel I just have to write to you and comment about how cuffed [happy] I am with your service!!! I signed up to
some junk mail thing a while back-to enter into a competition, thinking it
would only be something I would have to delete once a week. In truth what
I got once a week was a stunning, short sharp and witty run down on the
monthly pc news!!! - Graham"

The Intel Pentium 4 processor has come a long way in
the last two years. These days, if you want a top of the line system, it's
going to have a Pentium 4 inside. Yes, AMD's AthlonXP 2700+ and 2800+
processors are just as powerful, its just that they're almost
impossible to find for retail sale while the P4 2.8 GHz has been easily
available since its' introduction. Ever since the Northwood core was been
introduced, Intel has been in front in terms of performance, and
perhaps more importantly, availability. What makes the Intel Northwood P4
so
attractive is that Intel has doubled the size of the L2 cache. With
512KB of L2 cache the performance penalty for having a long CPU pipeline
has been dramatically reduced. To top things off, Northwood Pentium 4's
are great overclockers. Many 1.6A and
1.8A P4's have no problem hitting 2.4 GHz+ with retail cooling! The CPU is
based on the new C1 core which uses the new enhanced, shrunken, Northwood core which
has a surface area of only 131 mm2. Non-enhanced B0 steeping Northwoods are
145mm2 in size. C1 stepping Northwood P4's also run on a
higher voltage of 1.525V as opposed to 1.5V for the B0
based Northwood's.

The 3DMark
benchmarks from MadOnion are quite popular and are often used to test the
power of computers, and while 3DMark may not always represent real
world 3D performance, it is usually a good indicator.
Like I mentioned in my earlier 3DMark2001 Tweak Guide , the best feature of the 3DMark
benchmarks is the ability to upload your score to the web and compare
your computer to some of the fastest rigs in the world.

As you can see,
3DMark2001 SE seems to get it's biggest
performance boost from overclocking the videocard (1800 point
increase), then overclocking the system (1600 point increase) and finally
by using aggressive memory timings (500 point increase). Tweaking the OS and using a 3rd party tweaker to tweak
the image quality only nets us about another 250 points.

Traditionally, Intel chipsets have always been the fastest and most
stable for Intel processors; just consider the venerable i440BX, i815E or
even the i850E. The characteristics of motherboards based on these
chipsets were all very good, but that changed with the release of the
i820+ MTH... Thet chipset
was buggy, caused data problems, and was eventually recalled.

Every DIY'er knows that finding the "perfect"
motherboard can be a pretty difficult task. There are so many different
manufacturers to consider, and then the amount of chipsets is pretty
diverse. For example, Intel itself has at least eight
mainstream Pentium 4 chipsets currently on the market. There are the
Intel i850, i845 and the i845D chipsets which all work with 400 MHz FSB
Pentium 4's, and then there are the i850E, i845E, i845G, i845PE/PG which
work with both 400 and 533 MHz FSB P4's. Tack on SiS's 645, 645DX, 648 and
VIA's P4X266, P4X266A, P4X266E, P4X333 and the P4X400, you're bound to
have some headaches deciding what to get!

It was not long ago that the
cry of 'webpad' was being echoed from companies like Hitachi to Gateway.
To be honest though, nothing really long lasting for the consumer market
ever came to fruition. Instead, webpads saw themselves transition into
internet appliances, and then most recently
evolving into 'tablet PC's'. The only areas these mobile devices (what
we like to call them) really found a home was in the vertical markets and
industrial applications where they could be tailored to very specific
tasks.

The 2.5lb AquaPad is a medium sized portable device centered around an
800x600 pixel TFT touch sensitive screen. The device is larger than a PDA,
but smaller than a laptop. The actual dimensions are 274x164x26 mm, and
walking around with it gives the impression that you are playing a
bit part in the newest StarTrek spinoff. The smooth blue and silver
AquaPad has several ports for expansion cards, but not much else, and fits
easily into the left hand.

Powered by a 500MHz TM5400
Transmeta Crusoe processor with 128MB of PC133 SDRAM, and a Midori
Linux operating system based out of a 32MB Compact Flash card, the AquaPad
is the definition of a low-footprint device. Expansion ports are kept to a
minimum, with just one Type II PCMCIA port, one external Compact Flash
port (useful for saving data, or for an IBM Microdrive), an IrDA window,
two USB ports and a place to stick in a pair of ear bud-style headphones.

There comes a time for
every user when upgrading just the components of their computer is no longer
good enough. Rather than drop my nice new motherboard and
processor into the
dusty no-name case I have been using for the last three years, I
went out and picked up a black Antec SX1030B full tower case for
about $180CDN. That is a lot of money to spend on a case from
anyone's perspective, but it is a lot less than the flashy
Lian Li cases which retail from around $300CDN. Looking at the
shelves of cases at the store I had a choice between no-name beige
cases which would get the job done, toy-like mid towers with lots of
fake chrome, and flashy aluminum cases that are like some
kind of geek status symbol.

On the core level, the transistor count
now rings in at an amazing 107 million - that is almost double the
amount in a Northwood Pentium 4!. The R300 GPU is built with older
(and very dependable) 0.15 micron manufacturing technology, and
contains a long list of technologies which enable it to create
some of the best graphics hard core gamers have come to crave. All
of this at blisteringly fast frames per second, but we'll touch
on that in just a second. The first thing you'll probably be
wondering about is the floppy drive power connector on the right
hand side of the card. This power connector is there because the
Radeon 9700 Pro is power hungry and needs to draw more voltage then
allowed by AGP 3.0
specifications.

Shift / AdministratorMost programs require administrative access to install, however if the current user which is logged on the computer has work in progress it may not be possible to log off and log back on as the admin. Never fear though, Microsoft thought of this already and there is a little hidden trick that solves this problem.

If you need to access a program that requires administrative rights, simply press the "Shift" key and right click on the program file. You will now see the "Run as..." option and when you select that, it'll prompt you for a user name and password. Simply enter the administrator name and password and now you can run that program as the Admin. Administrative rights will only be enabled for that program alone, and once it has been closed admin access will be terminated.

This works in both Win2k
as well as WinXP and can even be used on programs in the Start Menu.

The Athlon XP 2800+ would be an excellent product. Not only is it faster than the 2.8GHz Pentium 4 (when residing on an nForce2 platform), but it is also priced much more aggressively than Intel's current flagship. There's only one problem - AMD anticipates that the 2800+ will first become available to hardware enthusiasts in the beginning of 2003. By the end of this year, Intel will already be traipsing around with a 3.06GHz Pentium 4 and a dual-channel DDR platform with AGP 8x support, among other features.

Though AMD's official roadmap still claims that the 512KB Barton core will debut late in 2002, I think it's a safe bet that New Years Day will come and go without mention of the last core design AMD has planned for the Athlon XP. Unfortunately, I suspect that the much-anticipated Hammer architecture will suffer a similar fate. It may be announced early in 2003, but processors probably won't be widely available until the middle of the year.

Perhaps AMD will surprise us, though, and release Hammer in full force. It certainly wouldn't be the first time that AMD has taken the processor market by storm, that's for sure.

Do you read the HTLD each week? Let us know what you think of Chris' Column.

Next Week

The Intel 2.4GHz processor, i845PE motherboards, and more DDR400 memory...